Monday, April 15, 2013

SAN and NAS are two different types of storage or backup
systems. Before understanding the difference between them, we need to
understand concept of NAS and SAN. In SAN, data copied block oriented and in
NAS, data copied or it will have access at file level. Server attached storage
faces many problems, that’s why to replace this kind of storage SAN or NAS is
the best option.

Storage Area Network:

SAN is the storage area network which is useful for long distance storage. i.e. Name defines that storage of some area network. it is fast as compared to NAS copying speed. Fibre optics cable is used for this network.

SANs are networked infrastructures designed to
provide a high performance, flexibility in use and scalable storage
environment.

Fibre
Channel switches and fibre channel network protocols used in SANs, and it makes
device connections reliable and efficient.

Data copied from server to storage devices in
blocks which make it faster.

SANS are used for wide variety of applications
where we need less response time, storage scalability while accessing storage.
If we need centralized storage for applications in which performance, data
integrity and reliability matters for us then we should have to go with SAN.

SAN provides high availability and application
failover environment as well.

Network Attached Storage:

It is a storage which accessed by workstations or servers
through a network protocol like TCP/IP protocol and applications like NFS
(Network File System) or Common Internet File System (CIFS) used for file
access. NAS appliances are really very easy to deploy in running environments.
We can easily add file storage capacity to infrastructure.

·NAS is suitable for those applications where we
need to deliver file data to multiple client machines over the network.

·NFS(Network File System) used in Unix and CIFS used in Windows for
NAS file sharing tasks.

·NAS clients can access the files from anywhere
in the organization.

Difference between SAN and NAS as in following
diagram:

NAS applications are now increasingly using SANs to solve
operational problems associated with storage expansion and data backup or
restore.